Government shutdown is nothing to worry about

By Matt Welch, Special to CNN

Updated 1609 GMT (2309 HKT) October 2, 2013

Government shutdown of 201332 photos

Government shutdown of 2013 – The Statue of Liberty looms over visitors below on Liberty Island in New York Harbor on Sunday, October 13, 2013. The statue was closed to the public by the federal government's partial shutdown that began October 1, 2013, but reopened Sunday after the state of New York agreed to shoulder the costs of running the site during the shutdown.

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Government shutdown of 201332 photos

Government shutdown of 2013 – Empty tables overlooking Seal Rocks are seen inside the closed Cliff House on Wednesday, October 9, in San Francisco. The 150-year-old oceanside icon was ordered closed by the National Park Service for the duration of the partial government shutdown, leaving most of the restaurant's 170 employees without work.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Boaters gather to protest the closure of Everglades National Park waters on October 9 near Islamorada, Florida. About a third of the 2,380-square-mile park encompasses Florida Bay and has been closed to Florida Keys guides and recreational fishermen since October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A camping party at the Dolly Copp campground in Gorham, New Hampshire, on October 9 is told that the park will close on Thursday, October 10, at noon. The privately run campground in New Hampshire's White Mountains National Forest was forced to close ahead of the lucrative Columbus Day weekend because of the federal government shutdown.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Rick Hohensee holds a "Fire Congress" sign near the House steps on Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, October 8.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Officers stand at the base of stairs leading to the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, October 7.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Tourists take photos at a barricade blocking access to the World War II Memorial in Washington on Sunday, October 6.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – River runners make camp in a dirt parking lot in Marble Canyon, Arizona, after being unable to access the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry on Saturday, October 5.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A closure sign is posted on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday, October 3.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Tourists take photos of the Statue of Liberty while riding a tour boat in New York Harbor on October 3. The statue is adminstered by the National Park Service and is closed as a result of the government shutdown.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A single security guard patrols the closed Lincoln Memorial in Washington on October 3.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A U.S. Capitol police officer walks past a statue of Gerald Ford in the rotunda on Tuesday, October 1. The Capitol is closed to tours because of the government shutdown.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Barricades around the World War II Memorial in Washington prevent people from entering the monument on October 1. The memorial was temporary opened to veteran groups who arrived on Honor Flights on a day trip to visit the nation's capital.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – World War II veteran Russell Tucker of Meridian, Mississippi, stands outside the barricade as he visits the World War II Memorial in Washington on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – World War II Veteran George Bloss, from Gulfport, Mississippi, looks out over the National World War II Memorial in Washington, on October 1. Veterans who had traveled from across the country were allowed to visit the National World War II Memorial after it had been officially closed because of the partial government shutdown.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A park ranger secures a road at the entrance to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial on October 1 in Keystone, South Dakota.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A visitor takes a picture of a sign announcing the closure of the Fort Point National Historic Site due to the partial government shutdown on October 1 in San Francisco, California.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Visitors to Independence National Historical Park are reflected in the window of the closed building housing the Liberty Bell, on October 1 in Philadelphia.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Hot Springs National Park employee Stacy Jackson carries a barricade while closing Arlington Lawn in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – The Washington Monument is seen behind a chain fence in Washington, on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A National Park Service ranger finishes putting up a sign indicating all facilities at the Martin Luther King Historic Site are closed to the public in Atlanta, on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A Capitol police officer walks through the empty Capitol Rotunda, closed to tours during the government shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington, on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – An employee at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site in Springfield, Massachusetts, puts up a sign on October 1, to notify visitors that the site is closed because of a government shutdown.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A U.S. Park Service police officer stands at the closed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A man looks into the closed Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A U.S. park ranger places a closed sign on a barricade in front of the World War II Memorial in Washington on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Park police and Park Service employees close down the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Members of the U.S. National Park Service close the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A U.S. park ranger posts a closed sign at the Lincoln Memorial on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – People look at a sign announcing that the Statue of Liberty is closed in New York on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – Fencing around the World War II Memorial prevents people from entering the monument on the National Mall in Washington on October 1.

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Government shutdown of 2013 – A U.S. park service police officer stands guard at the entrance of the closed Lincoln Memorial on October 1.

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Story highlights

Matt Welch: Government shutdowns haven't mattered much in past, nor will this one

He says it's been bad politics for GOP, which played a good political hand badly

He says GOP spent energy on Obamacare instead of focusing on spending issues

Welch: But shutdown does open welcome discussion on what's "essential" spending.

The first thing to remember about federal government shutdowns is that they do not matter very much.

History does not now recall the three Democrat-led shutdowns during the Carter administration over using Medicaid dollars to fund abortions, even though their combined 28 days will almost certainly dwarf the Great Impasse of October 2013.

Even the most famous modern shutdown, the 21-day Newt Gingrich/Bill Clinton standoff of 1995-96, had effects that were felt most acutely by comparatively well-off federal workers, not their taxpayer bosses.

A recent Congressional Research Service summary of that event included among its headline impacts stuff like "National Institute of Standards and Technology was unable to issue a new standard for lights and lamps that was scheduled to be effective January 1, 1996, possibly resulting in delayed product delivery and lost sales." Probably the worst thing back then was that passports for Americans and visas for foreigners went unprocessed for three weeks, taking a temporary bite out of the tourism industry.

Matt Welch

So when President Barack Obama says the shutdown will "throw a wrench into the gears of our economy" and put "the American people's hard-earned progress at risk," it is appropriate to treat such claims with skepticism. As we saw during the run-up to the March 1 sequestration trims in federal spending, politicians are incentivized by self-interest and unconstrained by shame in maximizing the hyperbole about what may happen if their ability to collect and redistribute our money is impeded even a little bit.

None of this, however, means that the shutdown is good politics. On that score, all recent public opinion research is unanimous: It isn't. As a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday concluded, "American voters oppose 72-22% Congress shutting down the federal government to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare."

This would suggest broad political support for keeping day-to-day federal spending levels (at most) as is, attaching some cuts to the inevitable debt-ceiling increase, and using the October 1 rollout of the Affordable Care Act as a teaching moment toward crafting policy and politics for legislative reform and eventually replacing it.

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Instead of focusing on those popular means to achievable ends, Republicans spent this political season attempting a Hail Mary pass with a broken throwing arm. Trying to defund Obamacare through deadline negotiations in the House of Representatives is not only massively unpopular, but—even according to some of the most influential backers of the project—probably doomed from the start.

It appears unlikely at this writing that our latest government shutdown will end with much more than a relatively insignificant medical-device tax tweak to go along with yet another budgetary can-kicking exercise. By that time, it is plausible to assume, public opinion toward Republican negotiators will have further eroded, making it harder to get debt-ceiling concessions. Everyone, everywhere, will declare the whole sorry episode bad for America.

But is it really? Despite the soul-killing grotesqueness of divided-government brinkmanship, there are some potential upsides even to this dreary saga, particularly for those of us who prefer our government limited.

For starters, closing down Washington provides one of the only occasions to have a national discussion of what is and is not "essential" government work. At a time when entitlements, pensions and debt service will be swallowing ever-larger slices of the budgetary pie at all levels of government for as far as the eye can see, this is an exercise we'll all soon have to master.

Shutdown politics from 2011 and earlier this year also produced something many people thought they'd never see: a year-over-year trim in Defense Department spending signed onto by the Republican Party. As Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, has observed, you cannot hope to limit the size of government if you do not also find some military spending to cut. Sequestration was the first in what will have to be many more such steps.

Even the maddening and deeply irresponsible budgetary governance by continuing resolution has produced a desirable result through undesirable means: an effective flat-lining of government spending. (Or as The Cato Institute's Daniel J. Mitchell puts it, "the federal government in the past two years has been wasting money at a slower rate.")

So, you don't have to squint too hard to see some positive side-benefits of D.C. dysfunction. But that doesn't make it any less desultory.

This year, for the first time since 2009, both the Senate and the House of Representatives fulfilled their legal requirement in passing an annual budget. It's long since time to supplement this minimal stab at responsibility with the legislative next step: a conference committee to hash out a compromise for consideration from the president.

If our federal government must careen from crisis to crisis, the least it can do is push the deadlines out to every 12 months. There are too many actually interesting things going on in this country to waste our energy watching professional hucksters argue over our money.